John Coogan & Jordi Hays are the hosts of TBPN (X, YouTube, Spotify, Substack), a daily live show covering the technology business. TBPN was launched only about a year ago, but has become a mainstay in tech culture and a center of gravity forterminally online technologists.
We cover the origins of TBPN, or the Technology Business Programming Network, from its beginnings as "Technology Brothers" to the interplay between John's love for technology and Jordi's for business. They share how they've built a media business in an era of infinite competition by leaning into high volume and constant iteration, all while treating media as the "main thing."
We discuss brand building and innovating on form by borrowing ideas from outside the tech industry—from Formula One and SportsCenter to Hollywood films—to avoid tech's tendency toward circular references. We also talk about their focus on X/Twitter and a niche, highly informed audience, rather than trying to go too wide. We also chat about what makes their partnership work and how they take the work incredibly seriously while not taking themselves seriously at all.
Prior to becoming an investor, Chris grew up in Buffalo, NY; studied around the world by way of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service; turned his student loans in $12M in the tech bubble of 2000 before losing it all and then some; and broke into Silicon Valley before eventually landing at Google, where he won the founders award. Then Chris started angel investing, which led to his first venture fund, Lowercase I. Lowercase I is one of if not the best performing VC funds ever, by multiple, at 214x, and included Twitter, Uber, Instagram, and more.
Toward the end of Lowercase, I had the pleasure of working with Chris. Around that time, he was also a Guest Shark on Shark Tank. Chris was heavily involved in both Obama campaigns and was a large supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2016. When Trump won, he wound down new investing at Lowercase and "hung up his spurs" to focus on political and democracy related efforts. Then, in 2018, Chris started Lowercarbon Capital to invest in "un-f*cking the planet": carbon removal, climate science, cooling the planet, and eventually nuclear fusion.
We talked about writing and storytelling, keeping people around who keep you honest, having a good taste in "weird," playing rigged games, taking the right kind of risks, and how even billionaires have imposter syndrome. We also get into how great founders embody inevitability, what makes the people at Lowercarbon special, how much Chris thinks about AI, and the many chapters of Chris's life, including whatever might be next.
Authenticity is a moving target for all of us, but one of the things I most admire about Chris is his ability and desire to shamelessly play his own game. Timestamps:
(0:00): Open: The Common Thread Amongst The Best Founders
(1:20): Intro
(3:42): Coast to Coast
(12:29): Leaning into Weird & Investing in Fusion
(24:35): Having People Who Keep You in Check
31: Gabe Whaley - Playing the Crowd & Outlasting the Hype
Épisode 31
mercredi 15 octobre 2025 • Durée 02:03:50
Gabe Whaley is co-founder and CEO of MSCHF (Instagram, Wikipedia), the art collective, fashion and footwear brand, startup, and fill-in-the-blank, famous for its viral products and cultural interventions.
A few notable works include Jesus Shoes (Nike Air Max filled with holy water), Severed Spots (a "decentralized" Damien Hirst print), Museum of Forgeries (One original Warhol and 999 perfect forgeries), and of course the Big Red Boot. This conversation was heavily influenced by MSCHF's recently released Made by MSCHF, a "textbook," through which the team peels back the curtain and shows us inside the black box that has produced more viral hits than one can count.
Gabe had a sheltered childhood and went to two years of army academy at West Point before eventually finding his way to New York City to intern at Buzzfeed around 2014. In his spare time, he started releasing weird internet projects under the name "Miscellaneous Mischief." After tasting virality a few times, he started collaborating with likeminded creatives and eventually formalized MSCHF in 2019.
I've known Gabe for many years (and even did a small collaboration with him from my seat at 100 Thieves). We sat down to reflect on the last 15 years and the arc of MSCHF, what made it special, and where one goes next when virality makes you feel nothing and the internet feels mature.
The conversation includes MSCHF's eye-of-the-beholder legibility, their obsession with value, the power of mystery, and how the product doesn't culminate with release, but after the audience has made it their own (in MSCHF parlance, "playing the crowd"). We also discuss the creative process behind the hit factory, how acting as a label rather than individuals changes their relationship to the work, whether the cultural future is actually canceled, how the internet has changed, and how real world experiences offer something to the creator and the consumer that digital life simply can't. We wrap-up by speed-running through many of MSCHF's internal values, from "always punch up," to "death is just as importance as birth," to perhaps its defining frame: "nothing is sacred."
30: David Senra - The Clarity of Commitment
Épisode 30
mardi 30 septembre 2025 • Durée 02:17:16
David Senra (Website, X) is a podcaster and loves that title more than anyone. He hosts Founders, where he teaches the lessons of history's greatest entrepreneurs by way of the biographies he reads of them. This week, he launched a second show, David Senra, where he talks to the greatest living entrepreneurs (often about the lessons from Founders). The first episode with Spotify Founder & CEO Daniel Ek is available now, and the show is in partnership with Scicomm Media, the team behind Huberman Lab.
David is an enthusiast about four things: entrepreneurship, reading, history, and podcasts. His two shows are the articulation of those obsessions in a form of service for the rest of us. He is following Charlie Munger's advice: "take a simple a idea and take it seriously."
David is one of the most energizing people I've ever met and has greatly inspired my work. I've had several multi-hour conversations with him that left me buzzing afterward, and I'm pleased that this is no exception. We cover many of his favorite lessons and founders, his process, biographies, focus, fear, endurance, service, and legacy.
I hope you are inspired to commit yourself to something worth your days and years.
Special thanks to Josh Kale for producing this episode. Please check out his show Limitless on frontier technology and AI.
Timestamps:
(0:00) - Open
(1:49) - Intro
(3:02) - Podcasts are Energy Transmission
29: Billy Oppenheimer - Attuned to Clues
Épisode 29
mercredi 10 septembre 2025 • Durée 02:20:43
Billy Oppenheimer (Website, X) is a researcher and writer who works closely with Ryan Holiday and Rick Rubin, and publishes the “Six at 6” newsletter. Billy is also working on his first book, The Work is the Win.
We kick off by discussing one of my favorite new ideas: "looking for clues," a process and philosophy for creativity that Billy learned from Rick Rubin. He shares the story Rick told him when he learned and adopted this language, which is so representative of how Billy (and I!) research in our work.
From there, we talk about Billy's robust research process and how he has created an external brain of the ideas and patterns that inspire him rather than relying on memory. We also talk about the importance of time as a filter and a series of maxims that underpin his work and creativity. We discuss the importance of inputs over outputs and his big idea and book title, "The Work is the Win," as well many related ideas on success, complacency, compounding, standards, initiative, local maximums, and more. We finish with some lessons from Billy's favorite people.
This conversation is a field guide for making things, pushing through the messiness of progress, and attuning yourself to the richness of the world that often takes the shape of clues.
24:26 - Balancing Listening to the Market and Finding Unique Influences
31:17 - Memory, Notecards, and Billy's External Brain
37:13 - Making Notes for an Ignorant Stranger, or Leaving Clues for Your Future Self
28: Maxwell Meyer - Starships & Road Trips
Épisode 28
mercredi 3 septembre 2025 • Durée 02:18:40
Maxwell Meyer (X, Newsletter) is the founder and editor of Arena Magazine, an "American Propaganda" print and digital publication focused on technology, capitalism, and civilizational progress. Max also works with Joe Lonsdale at 8VC and is the proprietor of his Iowan farm, Henry Hills. He was previously the editor of the Stanford Review.
Our conversation is about ideas Max is most interested in across storytelling and media, American values, technology and progress, capitalism, writing and craft, and deep love for his country.
We start with critique, the media's tendency toward cliché, and defending the new while building trust with readers. Then we talk about American ideology: its radical founding myth, collective enterprise, and a nation of movers. Max makes a case that national character ought to be lived and formed bottom-up, and repeatedly argues that cultural pendulum swings are as old as time and we need not overreact to the swings of the day. He describes tech's brief abandonment of the rest of America and talks through how we might export Silicon Valley's outcome-oriented culture to government and other industries. Max argues that the foundation of capitalism is simple: "you can't kill your counterparty." We of course discuss Arena, magazines, writing, editing, and his ambitions there too.
Above all else, Max makes the case for America, big and small: the beautiful, always-changing, rarely-agreeing, perpetually striving amalgamation of souls that stretch from sea to shining sea.
01:14: Elon, The Media, Cliché, American Collectivism, and Cultural Pendulum Swings
27: Mackenzie Burnett - Accounting for the American Dream
Épisode 27
jeudi 28 août 2025 • Durée 01:49:14
Mackenzie Burnett (Website, X) is the co-founder and CEO of Ambrook, financial software for independent businesses starting with farms and ranches. We trace her arc from a policy-first upbringing (USDA household, Congressional internships, climate-security research at Stanford) to a building software for rural America.
We talk about why Mackenzie loves America and cares about agriculture, the challenges of aligning sustainability with business and government, and pragmatically building resilience. Mackenzie talks about the American Dream and why independent small businesses are the foundation of it in many ways.
Then we get into Ambrook’s product philosophy: why “all roads lead to accounting,” how multi-P&Ls and biological inventories make farms deceptively complex, and why understanding bookkeeping and money movement enables better decision making and understanding over the long run for big and small businesses.
We also talk through Mackenzie's broad ambition for Ambrook; her growth as a leader; brand, aesthetics, and environment; Ambrook's editorially independent research division, Offrange, and more. Mackenzie is one of the most quietly ambitious and focused people I've met, and yet under her impressive and serious exterior is a life and love for America and its people that is all heart.
Special thanks to Josh Kale for his help producing this episode.
Cyan Banister (Website, X, Substack) is an investor, artist, and co-founder and General Partner of Long Journey Ventures. Previously, Cyan spent four years at Founders Fund and has a legendary angel investing track record alongside her husband, Scott, including early rounds in SpaceX, Uber, and DeepMind.
Cyan is as original as they come: she grew up on a Navajo reservation and was homeless by 15, with a series of unlikely serendipitous moments combined with optimism, agency, and love of capitalism taking her to a very different life than the one she grew up with. I focused this conversation not on Cyan's work, but her unique approach to living.
We begin with Cyan’s “church”: a weekly visit to see Bobby McFerrin and co. do live, jazz acapella in Berkeley, CA. We discuss how this space ties to presence, openness, and play, and then talk about the tension between novelty and consistency as she continues on her own path toward self-love and mindfulness. She also tells me about her radical approach to accountability and the empowering results of assuming that everything is her fault.
One of Cyan's favorite words is the French dérive, or an intentional drift, and it embodies her approach to the world. She moves with childlike wonder, seeking to see things and people from new perspectives and challenging others to react beyond their default settings. She daydreams about the outcomes she wants and has remarkable conviction and faith even when others do not believe her.
We wrap with a grab bag representative of Cyan's diverse interests, from filmmaking and performance art to the US Constitution to Bill Murray. Cyan manages to combine randomness and intentionality, naiveté and sober-minded awareness, humility and conviction. I hope you are are as inspired as I am to live more playfully, seriously, and courageously.
25: Reggie James - Our Infinite Mirrors (Live at FWB Fest)
Épisode 25
mercredi 13 août 2025 • Durée 58:11
Reggie James (Substack, X) is a designer, writer, and entrepreneur. Reggie previously founded Eternal and recently edited and published Hardware 2024, a book highlighting recent attempts at creating a different hardware future. This conversation happened live on stage at FWB Fest 2025 in Idyllwild, CA.
We explored Reggie's frame of technology as a mirror and the Kevin Kelly-inspired notion that technology has an agenda of its own. Reggie has a fresh perspective on brand and "feel" as they relate to technology products, why friction can create meaning, and a Naoto Fukasawa-influenced view that design is about communicating values. The latter, for Reggie, originates with writing.
We dipped into a discussion about how hardware and how it shapes our software cultures, and what a world with more basic luxuries like the iPhone might look like. We also discussed "loaded" technologies and the current narratives that are working in crypto vs. what might be idealized.
The conversation concludes with a zoomed out meditation on myth, American western idealism, personal history, and what type of vision is required to create something radically new. This episode is shorter than usual given the live nature, but it's jam packed and I'm thrilled that we were able to cover a lot of ground across many of the ideas that are representative of Reggie.
Linus Lee (Website, X) is a builder, engineer, and writer who explores how software can amplify our abilities, humanity, and agency. He builds, researches, and advises on AI at Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm, and continues to write and hack on personal projects.
Previously, Linus held research or engineering roles at Notion, Betaworks, Replit, and others, and has built over 100 personal projects on the side--including his own programming language and most of the tools he uses day to day. Most of his work, writing, and projects revolve around language, knowledge work, thinking tools, machine intelligence, and latent space for creativity.
We begin with how technology can concentrate or distribute power and amplify our diminish our agency. Then he breaks down his framework around instrumental and engaged interfaces, why representation is so critical in tools, and talks through what 'tools for thought' actually means. We also discuss the state of LLM tools and how they can become more robust, as well as how latent space could be codified to help us understand more qualitative domains. This bleeds into his approach to and work at Thrive, which we discuss in detail.
Linus is attuned to the ways technology can make us more or less human, and that's reflected throughout. Technology is not determined: the future we imagine and create is entirely up to us. Will we optimize ourselves into something non-human, or dream our way into something beautiful?
Views expressed here are the interviewee's and not intended as investment advice.
(32:00): The Power of Language and Stories
(1:03:03): Investing, Risk, and Wild Confidence
(1:27:57): Imposter Syndrome and Making Companies Better
(1:38:03): Lowercarbon's Team and Culture
(1:57:47): Chris's Life Chapters, AI, and Creative Outlets
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